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GORE, Michael (1506/7-48 or later).
Available from Boydell and Brewer
Constituency
Dates
Family and Education
b. 1506/7, yr. s. of Richard Gore (d.1543) of Nether Wallop, Hants. educ. Winchester 1519, New Coll., Oxf. scholar 19 Nov. 1523, fellow 1525-6, BCL 8 May 1531. m. 1526.1
Offices Held
Biography
A younger son in a Hampshire family, Michael Gore vacated his fellowship on marriage but six years later took a degree in civil law. It was as a servant of William Paulet, Baron St. John, who was himself to acquire the manor of Nether Wallop in 1547, that Gore was returned for Portsmouth to the Parliament of 1545 less than a month before its postponed assembly; his fellow-Member John Fryer was described on the return as a servant of Chancellor Wriothesley. The King and Council had been in Hampshire and at Portsmouth during the invasion scare of the summer and St. John had remained there for some time after their departure, taking over from the Duke of Suffolk the responsibility for the military government of the town.2
Nothing else has been found about Gore’s service or its rewards although it was presumably his master who had in 1541 secured him a grant of the wardship of Henry Williams, the son of a Salisbury draper who held lands in Hampshire and Wiltshire. Gore himself is not known to have possessed any land: his father noted in his will of 1543 that he had already provided for him, perhaps at the time of his marriage, giving him, amongst other things, 200 sheep and £20. Gore was still alive early in the reign of Edward VI when he was engaged in a dispute in the court of requests over the estate of his brother-in-law William Oglethorpe of King’s Somborne, Hampshire. This is the last reference found to him.3